Gutenberg Editor Markdown Support, Clear Formatting, Subscript & Superscript Formats, Toggle Title and more in EditorsKit 1.6

A few weeks ago, I was asked a question by Sarah Gooding for a post on WPTavern about EditorsKit. 

A lot of folks have complained about Gutenberg being too distracting to use for writing. I’ve often wondered if the plugin ecosystem will eventually come up with a plugin that strips Gutenberg down to the bare essentials for writing. Is that something you could see fitting in with EditorsKit?

And I answered:

I’ve thought of that too, especially when my writer colleague asked me about it. But I think it’s not time for that yet, I’ll wait for more Gutenberg releases before deciding if it’s needed to be added on EditorsKit.

It’s true that I needed Gutenberg’s API to be more extensible, so that I can achieve the plan I have for writer’s bare essentials, but this doesn’t mean that I’ll wait a long time to prioritize what most of the writers need to create contents freely.

EditorsKit 1.6 aims to provide writers, bloggers, and content creators tools to maximize the use of the new Gutenberg editor when it comes to writing flow. I’ve added a lot of features to improve the editor alongside hot fixes and compatibility issues. Take a look on the video highlights below. 🎬

EditorsKit 1.6 is now available 🚀 Comes with Gutenberg Editor Markdown Support, Clear Formatting, Subscript & Superscript Formats, Toggle Title and more. Here's a quick preview on how these features were integrated on WordPress Gutenberg block editor 🎬 pic.twitter.com/JOpuQetqEP

— Jeffrey Carandang | #WCAsia (@jeffreycarandng) June 5, 2019

Gutenberg Editor Markdown Support

With version 1.6, you no longer need a Markdown Block plugin to write freely via keyboard. Integrated with RichText API, markdowns for *bold*, _italic_ and ~strikethrough~ can now be used alongside other available editor markdowns. These keyboard shortcuts for markdowns are also accessible easily from the Settings menu, for you to be able to take a look at them. I’ve already reported an issue to Gutenberg Github repository to extend keyboard shortcuts modal popup so all these can be added in one place.

Better Clear Formatting Option

Clear formatting is only one of the missing feature on the new Editor compared to TinyMCE. I’ve got a few requests on EditorsKit Facebook Community and on Slack regarding this feature. Personally, I rarely use clear formatting button, but for some it’s really needed, especially when transferring the content from external sources like Google Docs and Dropbox Paper.

I thought of this hardly and came up with a better solution compared to other Clear Formatting that’s currently available. This new format will let you :

1. Clear formatting on specific text.
2. Remove formatting on selected/highlighted text.
3. Clear all paragraph and heading blocks formatting via “Clear Block Formatting” block settings.

Subscript, Superscript and Uppercase Text Formats

Subscript, superscript, and uppercase formats were also suggested by the Facebook Group and by David Decker who is one of the users of EditorsKit and my other plugins. According to him, having these features available will lessen the plugins he’s using. Having these features will enable writers to easily have access to the formats as well.

Toggle Title Visibility

With everything that can be added via blocks, there’s some cases that I don’t need to show the title on the frontend of my website, but I don’t really like getting (No title) on my Pages Dashboard. It’s frustrating if I have multiple of those pages and it’s not clear what these pages are when I’m about to edit them. This feature is to solve this problem. When you toggle title’s visibility, it will not be displayed on your website but will be displayed on admin pages dashboard list. Pretty simple but helpful in my case and I’m hoping in yours too.

Enable or Disable EditorsKit Features

You have full control over EditorsKit starting version 1.6. You can now disable features you don’t want to use on your website and enable them later. Some features are case to case basis — may be really helpful on your website but not on others. Nonetheless, having this option will give everyone complete freedom over EditorsKit features.

Freemius Insights

To collect more data on what Gutenberg version users have, I’ve decided to add Freemius Insights. Upon plugin activation you’ll prompt to opt-in or not to share data that WordPress allows. This will help me improve my decisions with EditorsKit’s version compatibility, as we all know that Gutenberg’s API is changing rapidly.

Onwards

Version 1.6 aims to provide better Editor’s Toolkit for everyone to write freely on Gutenberg editor. As always, I have a lot of upcoming features and ideas listed on Github repository, but feel free to add yours. You can also follow me on Twitter to get to check new feature teasers ahead of time and provide suggestions and feedback. Happy writing!

Download EditorsKit 1.6

EditorsKit 1.6 is available for free on WordPress.org plugin directory and main plugin website ( editorskit.com ). Happy Building!